March 22, 2026: Together in Hope and Courage

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
This Sunday we kick-off our annual Pledge Drive Campaign and remember the vital importance of this community to growing our hope and courage. Special music with the All Ages Band.

View the video archive of this service here:

Sermon Text

Together in Hope and Courage

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

March 22, 2026

READING

“A Holy Alchemy” by Rev. Kim Mason

Once upon a time
chemists believed
they could transform lead into gold
or death into life.

We laugh
but are we not also
in the business of alchemy?
Turning loneliness into connection,
pain into comfort,
anger into solidarity,
faith into action?

The subtle magic of church:
combines love with justice,
creates hope out of fear,
transforms individuals into community.

Here we engage in
a holy alchemy,
finding beauty in the ordinary
and life in the present.
Come, let us be transformed
Together.

SERMON Together in Hope and Courage

Our theme this month is Hope and what it means to be a “Community of Hope.” Have you ever had a time in your life when you felt without hope? What helped you make it through?

Years ago, during my ministry in Phoenix, Arizona, I had one of those times. The congregation and I were deeply engaged in the work of immigrant justice - we were fighting the abuses of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the massive federal deportation machine. This was under President Obama - who to this day, has still deported more people than any other president. We were losing people from the community and U.S. citizen children were being orphaned by the deportation dragnet. But community organizing was also making a difference. Organizations learned how to help people through legal resources to get free. And there was growing hope in our ability to create federal accountability for the corrupt and abusive sheriff. Even on the most difficult days, there was hope and meaning in being engaged in the resistance together - in being committed to human rights and human lives.

But then, alongside this work - there were a number of personal losses within the congregation and in the community, one right after another. It felt like one, two, three too many heartbreaks for the community - and for my own heart. When I looked for hope in my own spirit, I found a vacuum. I wasn't sure how I could continue - what I could offer - after all ministers are supposed to bring hope, right? How could I do that when I couldn't find it in myself?

In my despair, I called a friend - a colleague in ministry - who was also deep in the work and who always seemed so resilient - so hopeful. She listened as I named all the heartache - listened as I told her I felt empty. She listened and then she asked if she could pray for me. I said yes, though not sure that it would help.

She prayed for me right there over the phone, aloud. I don't remember what she said exactly, but she reminded me of my calling to the work. And while the words escape me, I still remember the feeling - like a re-ordination that stirred up the dry dust of abandoned hope in my spirit, causing it to swirl again. It didn't change the reality of loss or the enormity of the grief or challenges, but it changed me somehow. It gave me hope that I could keep showing up.

Rabbi Heschel talks about how prayer doesn't change the conditions of our world - but it can change us. Kim Mason speaks of the holy alchemy of religious community - the way we “create hope out of fear,” turn “loneliness into connection, pain into comfort, anger into solidarity, faith into action.”

This practice of religious community - it is magical. This religious community is “miraculous” as Charlie Pickle said last year in his Pledge Drive testimony. Miraculous, not in a supernatural way - but in the power of human connection, human community rooted in hope, rooted in love, living courageously.

One of the most well known writers and philosophers on hope is the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl - known throughout the world for his powerful book Man's Search for Meaning. In the book, Frankl reflects on his time as a prisoner at several Nazi concentration camps - including Auschwitz. While Frankl survived the camps, his parents, his brother and his wife did not. Two weeks ago, in speaking of hope, I talked about some forms of sunny optimism being a form of denial - a shadow side of hope.

Frankl was not a sunny optimist. He was a realist who experienced the worst horrors, moral corruption, and cruelty of humanity. In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl wrote about the difference he noticed between his fellow prisoners - those who truly lost themselves to despair and even engaged in cruelty themselves, and those who did not lose their humanity in the midst of such an inhumane place. He said the difference was those who kept a sense of meaning and purpose.

One exercise Frankl suggests when we feel hopeless is to think not about what we expect of the world, but what the world expects of us. In other words, rather than thinking about yourself as the object being wrongly treated, and all the bad things happening to us, remember you are a subject too - and you have agency. One way to do this is to imagine someone beyond ourselves, someone we admire or love - it could be God, a loved one, our ancestors. Imagine them, and ask yourself, “What would honor them?”

This exercise is an invitation to remember our own agency and the values

to which our lives are rooted. It calls us to continue to live out the values of love, community, relationship, and responsibility no matter what life brings.

As I think back to the prayer my colleague offered in the moment of despair, I was thinking of all the things happening to me and to the community - and it was all too much. And it was too much, but her prayer was a call to remember that I was called - just as we are all called to respond to our times and our communities with love. And that even if our gifts feel meager in the moment - they still matter and offering them - even in the midst of tremendous suffering and evil - is a source of hope - for ourselves and others.

And this, then, is the power and magic of this religious community. It calls us out of ourselves, invites us to see a larger view, a larger world beyond just our own lives. It reminds us that our gifts matter and are needed - and that love asks us to keep showing up. It reminds us of our agency and power as individuals and as a community. We have agency. And we too are called to this moment to share our gifts and our ministry.

Remember the story of Gaura Devi and her community (from Time for All Ages) - a community that knew the value of the forests around them - knew deeply their dependence on the trees - and their responsibility to them and to each other. And in that moment when they were in danger, they put their bodies around the trees to protect them. And they also brought tea for the loggers - who were just workers doing their jobs - in an effort to create understanding and connection. Together, this community showed up with courage and with hope for what they love.

And we, too, in this moment - are being called to show up for what we value, for what we love and for what we know needs protecting. Together, we are called to courageously organize for our values; to create community and sanctuary that provides hope and solace for our spirits; and importantly to imagine a world that is more loving and just, where all people can thrive, and work to make it real.

Courage - Sanctuary - Imagination: This is what we are called to as a community.

Together, in this moment, when neighbors are scared to leave their homes, and families and children are separated through detention and deportation, we are called to love our neighbors and support those in need. Today, in this moment, when our trans and non-binary siblings’ rights to live, to get healthcare, to drive a car - to simply exist - are being denied, we must proclaim even more boldly that trans people are whole and holy, an inseparable part of the beauty of the human family. And in this moment, when our wanna-be king of a president and his allies cut funding for healthcare, the Veterans Administration, and programs that serve the people, while spending billions of dollars on weapons of death in an illegal war, dropping bombs on children while our soldiers are put at risk without clear reasons or an endgame - we must have the courage to say loudly together, again and again: “No More. Enough!”

And we have a critical chance to say that alongside millions of other Americans next Saturday - March 28th - 1pm at the Courthouse - at the third No Kings Rally. And this is important - because in this present attempt at an authoritarian takeover in our country - the cracks are happening! They are not as powerful and indestructible as they pretend.

The blatant disregard for the lives and livelihood of Americans is showing. The resistance in Minneapolis against ICE - showed the authoritarian desires of this administration - but also the power of Americans’ love for their neighbors and willingness to resist tyranny. We need to keep showing the power of this resistance - because it helps companies, universities, legislators resist.

We know one day is not going to do it - but we also know that while we are inundated with propaganda that tells us to be afraid of our neighbors, that relishes in racist dog whistles, and that argues that we protect women by erasing trans women, rather than by creating accountability for actual violence against women - then we have to show to others that so many Americans reject what is happening, that we condemn what is happening. We have to keep naming the lies and showing up for what is true and right. We have to show another way is possible.

For our values as Unitarian Universalists call us to love our neighbor, to value justice, equity, pluralism, and to proudly support and celebrate women's equality and LGBTQ equality. And, this vision, this faith, the values matter - they are needed.

We as a community have agency - we have power. And it matters that we continue to show up with hope and courage. And that we invest in the growing ministry and impact of this community - for it is life saving - and it is also a powerful center of resistance. Throughout history - independent churches that have not been co-opted by authoritarian agendas have played a crucial role in resisting tyranny. They have been centers for organizing and also critical holders of moral conscience - preaching, teaching, and sharing a vision of humanity called to love, to human rights, to equity. Our work is before us. Our investment in the community through our pledges makes this ministry strong and vital. Together, we make this community strong. Together we create this community that renews our spirits, holds us in love, inspires our courage, and calls us to the hopeful acts of imagination and practice that show to all that another way is possible - and we can be a part of building that new way.

Because together, we are a source of hope and courage.